Do You Feel Lucky?

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Are you folks familiar with this setup? They call it a large number of different things, such as "Bed, Wed, Dead" or "Fuck, Marry, Kill" or "Date, Mate, Annihilate," or "Crush Kill Destroy" - no wait. That last one's not one of them. Unless you could use "crush" as in "have a crush on"? The idea maybe being something less formal than mawwage, twoo wove...? But no, that doesn't work because the moral dilemma aspect really calls for each of these to be pushed to the extreme limit: actual life-and-death stuff. Literally sex, or literally taking that death do us part leap, or literally death. Literally hypothetically, I mean! Literal in the hypothetical universe, where your interlocutor just put you. Literally in that world of pain where only you can choose - and where you have to.

Hm. Except if we use "crush" for sex, then "destroy" has to be marry. Hm.

I don't know. It could fit! But there are better fits, so let's leave C,K,D out of it, for clarity's sake.

Anyhow, the idea is: somebody names 3 people, or fictional characters or whatever, and you have to pick between them: hypothetically, you have to pick one to have sex with, another to marry, and another to kill. There's no rule that you can't kill the one you marry! I mean - I'm not your lawyer and I can't advise you, there probably are rules that say you can't do that, but the rules of the question don't prohibit it. Ditto there's nothing to say you can't have sex with the one you marry, either - there's really nothing in the rule that says you can't do ALL THREE to the person you pick to have sex with! But the point is, the additional two acts are totally non-compulsory. If that's how you roll, that's on you!

What's compulsory, under the scenario, is you have to pick one who you DEFINITELY have sex with, and pick a different one to definitely marry, which leaves the third one, who you have chosen to kill.

You see here how this so-called "innocent game" becomes in fact a moral dilemma in dead earnest. These are some issues here we're dealing with, potentially!

Folks, it's a hypothetical. Grow up. It's meant to be a moral dilemma, to test your ability to make a hard call when the chips that could never actually be down suddenly GET DOWN. If you're not up to it, if you're some kind of moral coward or intellectual overthinky objectioner, grow up - there's nothing really at stake here and no harm in pondering these quandaries.

I'll give you an example, because I bet I could do any number of these pretty easy!

Now here you see where it really can force some hard choices! You have to work your way through it. For the sake of this answer, I'd like to mention I'm assuming that for each of my choices I get to do each as much as I like. There's nothing in the setup of the question to limit that, any more than there is to exclude you from adding on voluntary actions to the mandatory one you're forced to pick. There's just nothing in the scenario that forces the limitation (except, of course, the consent of any partner you haven't explicitly chosen to murder. That goes without saying, I hope).

So:

Velma, Shaggy, Scrappy Doo.

Screw Velma, marry Shaggy, murder Scrappy Doo. Easy!

Poor Shaggy in that case, though. I hate to lead a dude on, but #1 I was forced to choose, so lesser of several wrongs, sorry my man! It don't make a right, but when somebody holds a hypothetical gun to your head, what do you do? What do you do? #2, Shaggy strikes me as a pretty conscious dude. Pretty open-minded, and I bet he would want to help "strike a blow" for equal marriage rights, you know? Me and him could do that. #3 I do not support interspecies marriage or bestiality whatsoever. And #4, what the hey, as long as he's OK with me sex-partnering Velma whilst restricting myself to a more "platonic" bond with him, I guess could slip him a "scooby snack" every now and then. Strictly hypothetically, here.

And I want to be able to kill Scrappy Doo every god-damned time the mood strikes me.

Point is: it's a thought exercise. It's a test of character. It's a way to raise and explore greater issues, using some trumped up never-gonna-happen moral dilemma. Because how will you know? How will you know unless you ask yourself, what you'd really do in a difficult situation? How well do you know your self? How well do you want to know yourself - and do you really want to know the answer to that question? Some people don't, but I do.

So yeah, go ahead and pose me a trichotomy or few in the comments, if you want! I can knock these out bang bang bang like eating popcorn. How did I get so good at hypotheticals, at moral dilemmas?

This is a contingency plan to cover the possibility of huge, unspoken elephants.

1. Establish whether there is or isn't a huge, unspoken elephant in the room, or even circling the room.

--->If elephant = NO then END

--->If elephant = YES then 2

2. Determine from the tone (and, if any, wit) of any pit-pat back-forth zip of pithy remarks concerning the possibility of said (or rather, unsaid) elephant whether said unsaid elephant is a good elephant, such as might be fun to continue to unmentionally waltz near, around, or towards; a good elephant such as could be great fun to acknowledge openly and/or parade around with/on; or a bad elephant, such as should never have been brought to the dance and/or could prove ruinous to provoke or arouse.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

I walk through life arrogant. You people have seen. I've always sort of enjoyed that about me - I know, it's an ugly word to some! But I balance it with specific virtues, SUCH AS: I love that word! I love the sound of it. Arrogant.

This more than balances out that it's an ugly word to some.

Yet in my less self-possessed moments, this pose of arrogance - sincere as it is, it's definitely a bit of a pose. Like, a superhero pose, leaping to take flight, or like a rock star, one foot on the amp throwing shapes in the spotlight? You know the kinds of poses I mean! Those are just arrogant. You know? And sure, maybe the rock star is only playing - excused. And maybe the superhero's only playing into that role, that he or she and the world as well pretty much do see him in and love it, or her in of course.

Yet in my less self-possessed moments, when I stop looking to see; when everything blurs - or not blurs, really, since much of the detail is actually sharpened - but when I stop looking. My recognition blurs, at least, and the picture that's lit before me (generally, this occurs on or about the same spot of West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz CA, looking out over Monterey Bay towards the mists and mountains of Big Sur - what a nice walk!), I don't really see objects. So much as shapes, patterns made and joined, of color in hard-to-exactly-name arrays, in a beautiful and bewildering composition of dims and rich hues, hung in tapestry under an invincible blue, with brilliant brights dancing upon deep darks. Blinded by Monet, maybe. And it doesn't even matter what things actually are. Let alone how. It's beautiful.

In those better, mind-free moments, I can't see how any other response can be appropriate to life, except: gratitude. Gratitude and humility. Humility, because I didn't deserve to be here. Because nothing I've done, and nothing I am, entitled me to this. No virtue, no strength, no talent, no skill, no achievement even, nothing solid or valid or true you could cite, except perhaps: birthright.

But I know I didn't deserve to be born. And for that reason: gratitude. Thanks mom! And dad. And "Our Father who Art In Heaven," too, if you're up there. Whether you are or you aren't doing art in heaven, you definitely do down here. You Art down here. So thank you!

I thank God now, just in case I don't get the chance later.

And people are just the same way. And some days, even to a far greater degree than landscapes, even the prettiest ones you could look for, with their seascapes breaking in and over and upon them. People are just the same way, and some days even moreso. They are a play of light upon a fantastic canvas. You can see it in them, and where to look. They say there is only one light [ who says? citation ], but to see the light of life dancing...! - oh, you atheists can be coy about it, if you choose - and rightly so, but you see it too. You just attribute it to a different place. Yours, too is a great good place. You attribute it to a wonderful place: to us. To humanity itself. You consider humanity itself to be a vessel of such light. To give such light, to cause such light. And so be it, may be! I can't see causes and sources in a thing like this, and I don't care to. There's the light to look at, and to see by, and it's lovely and evident, ain't it? Who needs to know how filaments work when you run currents through them. Who needs to know how hydrogen's heart grows heavy in the meeting with its mate hydrogen, bringing forth helium and illumination in an explosion of light. You see the light.

I mean, things such as electricity, and electromagnetism, and thermonuclear fusion and everything else you could know about a given sharp shard of light, its provenances and origins - they are beautiful to wonder about and wonderful to know, aren't they? But the light is self-evident, and more than sufficient. It is more beautiful and far more wonderful than however it happened to work.

All I care to see is so self-evident to me that I can't stop seeing. Each pair of eyes your eyes chance to meet, as you talk or you laugh, and as you make, and then break, and then remake contact - shyly smiling maybe! Or narrowing. Suspicious! Or leaning coyly forward - each pair of eyes has the same light dancing behind it. And yet not: for all the colors and tones are changed, in the brightness that comes shifting and shading in each, so that each light - is its own. Or maybe, is owned. Is made its own. In a choice to shine or to throw shutters, or maybe just to flick the dimmer a bit - mood lighting! It is the same light that dances, but the dance does not belong to the light. A dance does not belong to the music. It belongs to the dancer; it is made by the dancer, a gift: and it is given in celebration of the music. It is because the soul, I think - with the eyes, famously windows. Really, though - I say "eyes," but it is the whole face that lights up, as far as I've seen. And when it does.

Although we are bright, lit from within, each person, each face, each soul is also lit by what each looks out on - always and always and always from its own unique point, from none other. Each point unique, of view and of you. Each its own perfect center of an infinite circle, each circle an infinite universe that you haven't seen. Because how could you? You can't have, you have never seen the first of it, and can't possibly know it - can you? But here it is in front of you. And it seems...so much like you know. Like you do know, or can. Or are going to.

For right now, for this time, the time being, the moment. You get to explore, and tour through to your heart's content - and maybe tear through your heart in the process! Maybe tear your heart's content in half, as part of the price of admission. So worth it. Admit yourself. Go ahead, tear yourself in half: that's the ticket. For as long as the other cares to offer their generosity, or honor your curiosity with their company and consent, so worth it to go in! Get comfortable, and let the lights come up. Or if only to converse! This will be a face-to-face encounter with that which you've never known: or whom, would be better. Will be better. In whom you will find a mystery worth an awe far beyond the unknowable, as you find yourself face to face with the knowable.

I am unreasonable in this. Or maybe, because of this. It seems unreasonable to me, the things we get to see in a place we have not deserved to be. It staggers reason, and for that reason I plead drunkenness.

No, not right now as I type this. I am sober as stones, but my stone's in the sun, and I do declare! As I live and breathe, I feel a warm glow coming on.

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As far as I know, I haven't made any money off of this blog and nobody's given me any free shit! In fact, it's kind of bullshit for me to find out about this now, when all this time presumably everyone else has been swimming in a sea of palm-grease, surfing in on the waves of payola while lining their bathing trunks with thick sheaves of filthy lucre!

Where's mine? Is there a grievance e-mail address that can be made available to we who seek redress for having been so grievously snubbed?

I got NOTHING.

Notice dated 12/1/09. Notice will be revised as soon as I tap my share of that sweet, sweet, internet swag.